I am only on a couple of forums where fitness by personal trainers is discussed. There seems to be a lot of bashing of what we do. Does anyone follow Personal Trainers on Linkedin? I am still hearing how it's CrossFit's fault that people are getting so injured in the gyms.

I get this also from gym people here in Denver. Unless I am wrong I think the science presented in the NSCA manual completely supports CrossFit. It doesn't support over zealous trainers and bad technique. But who wants to be known as a bad trainer intentionally.

Anyone have any guidance on how they successfully handle the objections to CrossFit methods and exercise skills?

1) There's crossfit and then there's crossfit, there are many variations of it. There are some that are great and some that are not so great. Some people get exposed to one or the other and comment accordingly.

2) The goal of most people (if the PT's want to market to maximum group) working out is to get aesthetically bigger. The 'crossfit' those PT's have been exposed to is the same in point 1) and so the cycle continues.

Pretty much every negative I've seen/heard about CF is due to people overdoing it themselves or from poor coaching.

Trainers usually error on the side of not injuring their clients, which also means less effective workouts. It takes a lot of instruction and practice and being involved to practice CF effectively and safely, and many ppl and some coaches don't want to invest that much energy, IMO.

I would modify that a bit to say "CF doesn't injure people, dumb coaches who don't insist on good form/teach logical progressions/scale workouts for beginners/program intelligently injure people." Someone who's relatively uneducated about fitness walks into a gym assuming the coaches know what they're doing, just like when I walk into a doctor's office I assume he/she is properly trained and concerned about safety and whatnot. They may not be able to tell the difference between a good coach and a bad coach, or good programming and bad programming....they're just going to go faster when the coach yells at them to go faster.

There are smart ways to train new clients and there are dumb ways--the smart ways ensure that they may gains and are injury-free for a long time, the dumb ways ignore any reasonable ideas about slowly ramping things up and burn people out from injuries or overuse.

I think alot of the bashing comes from 2 fronts.
1) The whole "Forging Elite Fitness" slogan tends to rankle people, for a variety of reasons. To me I don't find it that bothersome, why because I think big picture. Do regular CF's on the whole (people who make an effort to workout at least 3 times a week, keep their diet in check etc.) have "elite" fitness when compared to Pro Athletes, or the top echelons of various sports. No. But in comparison to the entire ADULT population of say America roughly 232million where JAMA recently released a study say 1/3 are obese and other studies have said roughly 2/3 are overweight/obese, thats over 70 and 140 million+ respectively. That doesn't exactly mean the others are "fit" they just aren't fat. So given that there are about 2500 CF affiliates world wide the majority in the US (so probably around 2000-2250) and lets assume that the avg number of "regulars" is probably around 100 give or take (basing this on my own gym), thats about 200 thousand people thats less than 0.1% . Even if there are 1 Million regular CFitters out there in the US that is still less than 1% of the Adult US population. Less than 1% of anything is a pretty elite group no? They just seem ****ed they didn't coin the marketing slogan first.

2) CF is an easy target to attack. It is identifiable, with a large web presence and in your face attitude. Much easier to say CF causes injuries (and thus sway potential clients away from it), than saying I followed the routines in some fitness magazine, or book, and got hurt. You can go on youtube, and find numerous of examples of people not doing CF, but still doing silly crap and/or regular old BB-PL-OL workouts/exercises and injuring themselves in the process. Just as their clueless CF trainers/trainess out there, there are clueless non CF trainers/trainees. As quite a few detractors have mentioned before, a lot of the component parts of CF have been around for a long time. People got injured back then, just like now. Only difference now there is an umbrella organization to go after rather than picking on individual techniques/exercises/movements.

Thanks for the responses. I know there are more coaches and gym owners who have something to say. Personally I would rather concentrate on building my business. Handling the objections is part of the game.

The higher you get up the food chain in a particular field, the more people that will hate you for doing what you do. Ignore them. The numbers you put together should tell you that there are more than enough people that will find you, and NOT listen to the vocal minority.

I would modify that a bit to say "CF doesn't injure people, dumb coaches who don't insist on good form/teach logical progressions/scale workouts for beginners/program intelligently injure people." Someone who's relatively uneducated about fitness walks into a gym assuming the coaches know what they're doing, just like when I walk into a doctor's office I assume he/she is properly trained and concerned about safety and whatnot. They may not be able to tell the difference between a good coach and a bad coach, or good programming and bad programming....they're just going to go faster when the coach yells at them to go faster.

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And CrossFit doesn't do much to dispell these allegations. Like many other fitness certifications, the CrossFit Level 1 training is a joke. But that's all that CrossFit requires for a coach to open a gym. A weekend course.

And CrossFit doesn't do much to dispell these allegations. Like many other fitness certifications, the CrossFit Level 1 training is a joke. But that's all that CrossFit requires for a coach to open a gym. A weekend course.

Thanks tips, for repeating something that has been brought up ad nauseam here and on other forums. Perhaps suggesting a solution to the perceived problem would be more productive? But really so what? All ANYONE requires to open ANY sort of gym/fitness club/health centre/studio etc. is sufficient capital. Backgrounds/Education/Experience/Training in any fitness discipline is not required. At least CF makes it a requirement to have a little bit of training and conformation of knowledge before they will let you use their name. But then again there is nothing stopping a person from doing the cert/failing the written test but opening up a gym/box/studio anyways so long as they avoid copyright and IP issues. So really the issue is kind of a moot point.

And CrossFit doesn't do much to dispell these allegations. Like many other fitness certifications, the CrossFit Level 1 training is a joke. But that's all that CrossFit requires for a coach to open a gym. A weekend course.